Educational psychology is also concerned with the dynamics of learning. In his contribution to this course, George Reese analyzes by way of example the notion of "productive struggle."How can educational psychology help us to understand the processes of learning?

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When you mention psychology most people think of counselling as a treatment for emotional issues, such as anxiety or depression…

And while all psychologists have training in these areas, our team has specific postgraduate training in Educational and Developmental Psychology, which is a branch of psychology focused on learning and development.

Educational Psychology draws from other fields such as neuroscience and often involves standardised testing to obtain information about children’s learning skills and abilities.

This information enables us to gain insight into how children learn and process information and what their learning potential might be.

And it enables us to recommend specific learning strategies and supports for home and school to help them to reach that potential.

And it’s not just intelligence that affect learning outcomes…

Emotional issues, attitudes, motivation, self-regulation, behaviour and self-esteem all contribute to learning.

A learning assessment is often the first step in the process.

This is not only to identify any learning disorders or difficulties…

A full learning assessment (or educational assessment) will also reveal:

Specific strengths and weaknesses in underlying learning skills
Academic achievement compared with what is expected for a child’s age and education level
Positive and negative stimuli
Environmental problems
And other factors that influence the learning process

Here are a few common signs of children experiencing learning difficulties:

Mixing up or reversing letters or jumbling sentences
Difficulties with numbers, symbols or maths problems
Struggling to clearly express ideas in writing
Difficulty remembering key concepts and facts
Difficulty focusing on work or paying attention in class

If any of these sound familiar, it’s essential to find out what is happening with a child’s learning skills as early as possible.

Why is early action so important?

The evidence is clear:

The earlier learning difficulties are identified and an effective intervention program is started, the better the chance of improving long term outcomes.

In fact, research shows that when the right learning strategies and support are put in place early enough, positive results can be quickly achieved and maintained over the long term.

As well as helping school performance, early action also reduces emotional problems associated with failure, such as anxiety and depression.

And intervention during primary school also helps prevent the development of further learning difficulties, such as written expression problems, in later years.

But it is essential that each intervention program is tailored to each child’s specific strengths and weaknesses (their “learning profile”).

That’s why most education experts recommend a full learning assessment as the first step.